SEO: what should it cost and what are measuring metrics

The two key questions everyone asks about SEO .....

1. How much is the SEO going to cost? Nearly every business today must decide how much to spend on search engine optimization (SEO).

2. Do I really need SEO ... to have to pay for SEO, or can I do it myself? Robust online marketing is imperative for survival in a web-driven world.

This post will answer those questions in detail and I' will be using a 2012 SEO research plus my 10+ years of experience working successfully with clients to accomplish quality SEO. [read more]

What is the significant accomplishment of SEO? Organic Search Results.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) affects only organic search results, not paid or "sponsored" results such as Google AdWords.

When a search engine returns its search results, it gives you two types: organic and paid. Organic search results are the Web page listings that most closely match the user’s search query based on relevance. Also called “natural” search results, ranking high in the organic results is what SEO is all about.

Paid results are basically advertisements — the Web site owners have paid to have their Web pages display for certain keywords, so these listings show up when someone runs a search query containing those keywords.

On a search results page, you can tell paid results from organic ones because search engines set apart the paid listings, putting them above or to the right of the organic results, or giving them a shaded background, border lines, or other visual clues. [read more]

Internet marketing - eight statistics to bring you insight and enhance your marketing

#1 Text messaging users send or receive an average of 35 messages per day.
Source: Forrester Research
Peer-to-peer communication through text messaging has become of core part of society's communication infrastructure. Is there is any possible communication that your customers and prospects would like to receive via text message?


#2 By 2016, more than half of the dollars spent in US retail will be influenced by the web. (Source: Forrester Research
Commerce is shifting more and more online. Make sure that you have a method to easily sell your product or service online.


#3 20% of Facebook users have purchased something because of ads or comments they saw there.
Source: Ipsos
People are influenced by, well, other people. Use paid and organic marketing on Facebook to influence the conversion actions that drive your business. [read more]

As a business owner you have a web site and/or blog so that you ....

1. obtain new customers
2. expand your potential customer base
3. spread the word about your products and services

To help you understand the many options you have for promoting and distributing your online content:

Paid media
Advertising on social media networks - Native advertising - Paid content discovery services - Pay-per-click - Retargeting

Earned media
Blogging - Outreach and PR - Social media strategies - SEO

Owned media
Your media content - Your digital footprint (marketing channels you created)
[read more]

Research to help you understand who is using social media and why they are using it.

#1 The top three social networks used by Business To Business (B2) marketers are LinkedIn (91%); Twitter (85%); and Facebook (81%). However, just 62% of marketers say that LinkedIn is effective, while 50% say the same for Twitter and only 30% of B2B marketers view Facebook as effective. December 2014 (Marketing Research)

#2 About 60 percent of all Internet activity in the U.S. originates from mobile devices, and about half of total Internet traffic flows through mobile apps. July 2014 (Geo Marketing)

#3 Google+ actually averages more visits per month than Facebook. Google+ receives 1.2 billion visits per month compared to Facebook’s 809 million. (Geo Marketing)

#4 Landing pages with videos increase conversions nearly 90 percent. (Ad Week)
[read more]

These terms and statistics inform you how Google identifies and sorts the content of billions of web pages that just keep growing in number - every day. You want potential customers to find you, so take the time to learn these three terms. They are the foundation of any SEO effort that's done correctly.

How does “Crawling” benefit my business?

Crawling is the process by which Googlebot discovers new and updated pages to be added to the Google index. A googlebot is a software that travels the web and reviews almost all of the existing web pages and files on web servers.

They use a huge set of computers to fetch (or "crawl") billions of pages on the web. The program that does the fetching is called Googlebot (also known as a robot, bot, or spider). Googlebot uses an algorithmic process: computer programs determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site. [read more]

These terms and statistics inform you how Google identifies and sorts the content of billions of web pages.

#1 85% of people would rather provide an email for an ebook vs. paying with a tweet
Source: Unbounce
When you are putting your marketing strategy together this is important to consider because you want to collect emails for your newsletter distribution.

#2 Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links
Source: Content+
This proves the value to your brand of having a quality blog. Do it up even better by using blogger which is run by Google to stay in the news feed of the world's #1 search engine - Google.

#3 Producing enough content is one of the biggest challenges for marketers
Source: Content Marketing Institute
This is no mystery to anyone wants serious inline marketing success. Don't give up and stay creative. [read more]

2014 Research: social media stats - 54 pages

Two surprising stats to me ... 70% of marketers use a blog which is second to 71% using visual content but here's the rub ... only 50% of those marketers with a blog - have a mobile friendly blog. I guess they are not reading my blog :-)

Here are six main points from the 2014 social marketing research:

Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn hold the top spots for future plans: A significant 66% of marketers plan on increasing their use of these social networks.

Marketers want to learn most about Facebook: While 93% of marketers are using Facebook, 68% want to learn more about it and 62% plan on increasing Facebook activities.

Video becoming important: A significant 57% of marketers use video in their marketing; however, 72% want to learn more about video marketing and plan on increasing their use of video. [read more]

This article provides some powerful research on what video and social media provide to promote your services and products.

Keep in mind that you have 10 seconds to capture the attention of the viewer. Visible Measures research is showing that 20% of your viewers will click away from a video in 10 seconds or fewer.

#1 According to the Online Publishers Association, 80% of Internet users recall watching a video ad on a website they visited in the past 30 days. It gets even better. Of that 80%, 46% took some action after viewing the ad. [read more]

This is a step by step article on how to set up a customized marketing campaign using a landing page on your web site.

In this technique, customized business application focused on marketing, I will describe how to setup a custom landing page that links to destination page on your web site with a free Google Analytics (GA) account.

The destination page denotes a marketing action you want your customer to accomplish - fill out a request info, view a page, watch a movie, or upload/download a file. [read more]

When you have a good grasp of how these terms will work to your advantage, then you are an educated online marketer.

With billions of web pages, in order for your page to soar in the search engines, there are certain elements that you must have in each web page. SEO (search engine optimization) has morphed over the years in its' practices. That is nothing new really, all technology morphs over time. Cars are a another example of changing technology. When you are getting ready to publish your content, make sure it has these elements and you will accomplishing some basic SEO principles.

Employ these four techniques on each web page to make sure search engines know what you are providing. [read more]

b>Small Business Web Marketing

Six concise, real life, examples of small business owners, like you, using mobile friendly designs and Google to 1) distribute new business perceptions, 2) put a proven strategy in place to invigorate their online marketing, and 3) implementing a simple method to take advantage of a free, best in class, business marketing tool - the Google search engine.

I made a fun video to show web site transformations. Click here and then scroll down on the page to view it.